Michigan's Palisades nuclear plant may be named one of nation's 5 worst

By Tina Lam

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

The Palisades nuclear power plant, which sits on the shores of Lake Michigan, could soon be downgraded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a status making it among the nation's five worst-performing nuclear plants after a year of accidents, unexpected shutdowns and safety violations.

The regional head of the NRC said last week that if performance does not improve, the agency would not hesitate to shut down the plant. Palisades is one of the nation's 10 oldest nuclear plants, and after hitting its 40-year life-span in 2011, its license was extended until 2031.

"Quite frankly, we find your performance troubling, and it declined in 2011," regional administration Cynthia Pederson said in a rare public rebuke of the plant owned by Entergy Nuclear Operations.

Entergy acknowledged mistakes. One accident in September led to a loss of electricity at the plant that tripped its reactor and caused equipment to malfunction.

The accident "could have killed somebody," the plant's manager said last week in a shaken voice.

That was one of at least five unexpected shutdowns of the plant in the past year after valves malfunctioned, seals leaked or pumps failed. The NRC spent 1,000 extra hours last year inspecting the plant.

Antinuclear activists and watchdogs say there are even deeper problems the NRC has not addressed, including Entergy not having replaced major components that former owner Consumers Energy said needed to be replaced when it sold the plant in 2006. Although their age makes those components vulnerable, the NRC says the components still meet safety standards.

"If all these failings and accidents line up in just the right way, we could have a very bad day at Palisades," said Kevin Kamps, a Kalamazoo native and staff member at Beyond Nuclear near Washington, D.C.

Palisades nuclear plant accident investigated

It began with a light bulb.

Trying to fix a burned-out light bulb on an indicator button led to a serious incident that left the Palisades nuclear plant on Lake Michigan without half its electrical power on Sept. 25, 2011. A piece of equipment slipped while a worker was troubleshooting on a live electrical panel, causing an arc of electricity and a loss of half the indicators in the room that controls the reactor. Signals went haywire for a while. The plant shut down.

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